


Life Imitates Art

by YumeArashi



Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternate Ending, Fix-It, Multi, Rants, Series Spoilers, Temporary Character Death, abuse of showrunners, character abuse, characters are their own actors, creator bullshit, deservedly, internalized misogyny (slight)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 04:15:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8734546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YumeArashi/pseuds/YumeArashi
Summary: Haven stars Audrey Parker, Nathan Wuornos, and Duke Crocker get their scripts for season 5B and decide to have a few words with the showrunners.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This started off as a humorous AU where the characters are their own actors and turned into catharsis of them yelling at their creators. Whoops? Also, Audrey’s attitude towards Paige contains a certain amount of internalized misogyny with which I do not agree, I merely think that’s how Audrey would feel about Paige.

On the set of Haven, the show’s three stars – Audrey Parker, Nathan Wuornos, and Duke Crocker - retreated to Duke’s trailer with their newly-printed scripts for season 5B.  They piled onto the extra-wide bed Duke had specially ordered for the three of them to share, eager to see what the series finale had in store for their characters.

But as the pages flipped, excited grins faded.  Frowns dawned.  As they reached the end, cries of indignation arose.

“That’s _it?_ ”

“I’m gone?”

“I’m okay with this?”

As one, they rose and stormed to the showrunners’ office.  Audrey slapped the script down on Matt McGuiness’ desk.  “What is this pile of crap?”

The executive producer blinked.  “You don’t like it?”

“What’s to like about this nonsense?” Nathan demanded.

“We thought you’d like it.  You get a happy ending,” Gabrielle Stanton, the other executive producer, said.

“Happy?  Was I happy when Lexie first showed up?  Did you miss the part where I refused Croatoan’s substitute, where I said only the real Audrey Parker is acceptable?”

“And speaking of the real Audrey Parker,” Audrey snapped, “Why the hell did I just spend five seasons fighting to establish my identity, fighting to _keep_ that identity, only to get wiped in the end?  I wanted to hold onto Audrey Parker so much that I came back from the Barn still myself, which had never ever happened before.  ‘You’ll be whoever you most want to be’, remember?  And your happy ending is to change me from a competent, intelligent, independent, ass-kicking FBI agent into some clueless helpless damsel in distress whose whole importance is as a mother and love interest?  How the _hell_ is that happy?”

“But…sacrificing herself if what Audrey Parker would do.  She already did it once.  It always felt like that’s where it was heading. That there’s something inevitable about her destiny, and having to go back and walk into that barn one more time,” McGuiness protested.

“Sacrificing myself, sure, fine.  Nobly throwing myself in front of the bus to save Haven and the people I love, yeah, absolutely.  Coming back as a half-baked, watered-down shell of myself that Nathan’s somehow supposed to consider a perfectly acceptable substitute and be in love with instead  – which is creepy in _so_ many ways – there’s the bullshit, that part right there.”

“It’s a way to demonstrate how special Audrey is relative to Nathan and how special their bond is, but still be true to the rules and mythology we set up,” argued McGuinness.  “We allow that ‘couple of the ages’ be together, but we put a little spin on it that protects the easy thing of letting them walk off into the sunset and not having to deal with all the challenges that they dealt with.”

After a moment of stunned silence and dropped jaws, Nathan demanded, “Then what’s the _point?_  Everything we’ve struggled through brought us closer, every challenge we dealt with built our relationship.  The whole reason we’re this ‘couple of the ages’ is because of the last five seasons we’ve fought side by side.  Which challenges _I_ would still be dealing with, I might add.  Setting me up with Paige doesn’t demonstrate how special Audrey was to me or how special our bond was, it does the exact opposite, it renders her completely irrelevant.  You’re wiping that all out, invalidating our entire relationship, saying that none of our shared past or struggles matter so long as her face hasn’t changed!  All so you can have an incredibly clichéd ‘happy’ ending that neither of us would ever actually be happy with!”

“Viewers don’t want easy, they want meaningful,” Duke agreed.  “Speaking of meaningful, I _die_ to stop Croatoan from getting the Troubles that are inside me and he just snaps his fingers and has all the aether he wants to make more?  What the fuck was the point, then?  What did I die for?  What reason was there to traumatize Nathan by making him murder someone he loves?  How do you not see how Croatoan’s ability to do that totally invalidates my sacrifice?  He didn’t need the petty handful of Troubles inside of me, why was he even bothering?  Just for the lulz?  I mean, would I like dying for a heroic sacrifice? No, because no one likes character death, the character least of all. But would I accept it? If I freely chose to give up my life to end the Troubles, or to destroy Croatoan, or to save Audrey and Nathan?  Yes - but only if it _fucking worked_.”

“Anything else would be too small to deserve it,” Nathan agreed.

“It was the most powerful way to end your character’s arc," Stanton broke in. "We liked the idea that Duke was able to sacrifice so much for his friends and for this town that in the beginning seasons he pretended not to care about.  We felt like we were almost cheating his character out of an awesome ending if we didn’t end up actually killing him.”

Another moment of outraged, shocked silence.

“Death is never awesome,” Nathan said flatly.

“The fans are gonna hate it,” Audrey predicted.  “Having a character struggle is one thing, but force-feeding them a never-ending shit sandwich topped off with a completely futile death?  No one wants to see that.”

“Yeah, don’t think I missed the bit where you destroy the Rouge and the Gull just to give me an extra kick in the teeth.” Duke snorted.  “I’ve already sacrificed for Haven over and over, it is _blatantly obvious_ that the whole selfish bastard thing is just not true, that’s been clear for at least the last two seasons.  I’ve had friends die, I’ve had family die, I’ve had friendships and relationships fall apart, I’ve been accused of every crime up to and including murdering one of the few people who actually gives a damn about me.  I’ve lost my home – which is incidentally also my refuge and fall-back livelihood and last-resort escape plan, which saved me from Haven after a childhood of abuse that no one in the town bothered to stop.  I’ve lost my business – which was entrusted to me by one of my oldest friends after having been in his family for generations, which is the foundation of my struggle toward respectability, something I can be genuinely proud of, and the first step toward rebuilding a positively disastrous self-worth.  And despite all of that I _keep helping_.  No one needs to be further convinced of my capacity for sacrifice.  How about a novel concept like fucking rewarding me for turning my life around?  How about letting me actually defeat the Crocker curse I spent the last two and a half seasons fighting tooth and nail to overcome?  How about letting me find peace and healing and happiness?  Please, go right ahead and cheat me of that ‘awesome’ ending.”

“Hear hear,” Audrey agreed.  “I am honestly hard pressed to see how you could have come up with a worse ending if you had actually been trying.  You somehow managed to write each of us the exact ending that would upset us the most.  Duke dies for nothing, in the way he worst fears, having completely failed to overcome either his family curse or fated death.  I get erased, re-written and replaced as though my hard-won identity means nothing.  Nathan gets left alone, with both of us gone - and then to add insult to injury he’s given a clone who is nothing like the woman he loves but will remind him of his loss every single time he sees her.  Everything about this finale invalidates everything the three of us have spent five seasons working toward, every theme and story arc and scrap of character development.  And you’re trying to sell this as a _good_ thing, as the most satisfying and happy end these characters could have had.”

“Which it isn’t, even for me and Paige,” Nathan added.  “Not when you give it two seconds of thought.  Even if you buy that I was willing to accept Paige as a substitute for Audrey, or even if you put on rose colored glasses and call it a new start, that whole easy stroll into the sunset without dealing with their past that you think you’ve protected?  That falls apart like a house of cards the minute Paige wants to know the first thing about my past.  Because either I lie about everything, or I tell the truth - which would basically amount to admitting to my new girlfriend that I’m only into her because I was in love with her twin sister.  Disgusting and disturbing.  You do realize that women aren’t interchangeable, right?”

“And even if Nathan lies, Paige isn’t going to settle for that.  Did you forget that one trait every imprint has ever had is dogged curiosity?” Audrey added.

“But…we have to keep it consistent with the mythology,”  Stanton said weakly.

“Fuck your mythology and fuck you,” Duke said bluntly.  “Do you know what would be consistent with your mythology?  Audrey managing to hang on to who she is and fighting her way back out of the Barn to be with the people she loves.”

“Besides, what’s this ‘that’s just how magic works in this world’ crap when you’re the ones writing the rules?” Audrey demanded.

“Look, I’m sorry you’re not happy with the ending, but you’re under contract,” McGuiness said.

“So we can’t walk out and bring the show to a premature end,” Audrey shrugged.  “But trust me, if you go ahead with this turkey, you’ll wish we had.”

“And that’s not a threat,” Duke said – even though knowing Audrey, it probably had been.  “We’re not talking about anything we’d do, we’re talking about the fact that there is nothing we can do to save your finale from itself.”

“Even if we brought your vision to life flawlessly, everyone will hate it.  Fans.  Critics.  Everyone,” Nathan agreed.

“Your names will be mud.  Everyone in TV is going to hear your names and go ‘oh, those are the guys who don’t understand the very basics of narrative storytelling’,” Audrey nodded.

“I tell you what, I will bet a cool grand that if you let us write the finale and then, a month after it airs, you do an interview and talk about your ‘original vision’ for it, everyone you tell will be horrified and glad you changed it,” Duke challenged.

“You want to write the ending,” McGuiness scoffed.

“Can’t be worse than this crap,” Nathan dropped his script in the trashcan beside the desk.

“Fine, hotshots, you write the finale if you think you can,” the producer scoffed.

 

* * *

 

Some months later, season 5B wrapped up.  Duke sacrificed himself to keep his troubles out of Croatoan’s hands, but this time the sacrifice had the intended effect.  Deprived of so much aether, Croatoan was hunted down by Audrey and Nathan, the two of them spurred by their grief and rage over the loss of Duke.

When they caught up to him, Audrey threw herself at her father murderously, screaming and sobbing, lunging at him over and over as he backed away in astonished fear.  Realizing for the first time how much he’d hurt his daughter, Croatoan caught her by the wrists, apologizing for the error of his ways until she wearily stopped trying to kill him.

He agreed to go into the Barn, taking it and the Troubles with him forever, leaving Audrey to the place and people she had come to love so.  She and Nathan watched, stone faced, as he regretfully headed toward the building that had appeared out of nowhere.  He paused in the doorway, and reached into his pocket.  “My last one,” he said of the ball of aether resting sinisterly in his hand.   As Audrey and Nathan tensed and started toward him, he whispered something to it and it zoomed off toward town.  “I think you’ll like this much better,” he said, disappearing through the door.

Audrey and Nathan raced back to town, terrified of what they would find, the aether having long since outpaced them.

They found Duke waiting for them on the steps of the police station, alive and well and smiling to see them again.

They all but tackled him, wrapping him in their arms, the three of them trading kisses of relief and joy as the scene faded out.

It was the most praised series finale in years.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Most of the dialogue for the showrunners is taken directly from this article and is direct quotes from them  
> http://www.tvinsider.com/article/60561/haven-series-finale-postmortem/ 
> 
> Big kudos to my friends in the fandom and my sister, who contributed a lot of this when we were ranting about the ending.


End file.
